In recent years, as cooking and restaurant appliances in large hotels or institutional kitchens have become more complex, there has been an increased need for the utilization of computers for diagnosing malfunctions. Today, cooking appliances are maintained and serviced, however, by a food service industry that—with exceptions—is too poorly equipped and untrained to do so. The domestic food service industry is composed of some three hundred independent service agencies, ranging in size from one up to hundreds of employees. Most, however, consist of just a few employees which are unfortunately burdened with the responsibility for preparing invoices, repairs, inventories, warranties, credits, returns, and the like. For example, these service agencies not only have to generate invoices, but also have to collect payment, which for obvious reasons is time consuming. With such other duties, service agencies have little time to keep up with the technology of today's complex kitchen or cooking appliances. With the existing food service industry so fragmented and ill-suited to handle administrative tasks as well as appliance repairs, it is estimated that their efficiency may be as low as 20%.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art to provide a cost-effective system which enhances the work force utilization of today's food service industry, allowing the proper work allocation of administrative and repair skills among those best suited to perform the tasks.
The food service industry is also faced with the problem of a difficult labor market. There is stiff competition for good employees and not enough workers to fill open positions. Supervision is difficult as well, especially for an owner/operator of multiple commercial units spread over many miles. Workers may be inadequately trained, careless or may take shortcuts in completing their tasks properly. Any of these problems can adversely affect food quality, level of service to the consumer, and compliance with various health and safety standards (for example, the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) regulations created by the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture to minimize bacteria-related illnesses which can result from improper food handling, preparation, and holding). These problems plague even computerized kitchen systems, because those systems can neither independently verify that the ascribed tasks have been properly completed, nor identify employees who are cheating the system. Moreover, to be competitive in today's global economy, the food service industry must gain tighter control over every process in the kitchen to combat escalating labor costs, achieve more accurate product forecasting, and realize faster and more efficient food preparation to better manage both facilities and human resources.
Appliance Status/Monitoring
There is a need in today's food service industry for a system that is capable of generating computerized task lists on a real time basis instructing employees to perform needed tasks, and then guiding the employees through the required tasks. These task lists could be transmitted and displayed on CRT's in the area of the restaurant where the task will be performed by the employee for easy reference. The task lists may also be accompanied by audible instructions in addition to, or instead of by visual means alone. Such task lists could, for example, provide timely communication between the point of sale (POS) and kitchen for placing orders. Computerized task lists could also provide important training for employees (especially new trainees), which due to high employee turnover rates in the food service industry, has become especially problematic for restaurant managers who have precious little time to spare for training in the first instance. Accordingly, computer generated lists could step employees through the cooking process for preparing various food items, various maintenance and cleaning procedures related to cooking appliances and other equipment, and any other required general duties.
Known systems use labor management tools to generate and printout a static list of tasks to be done, for example, at the beginning of each day. However, such lists do not have any real-time feedback and thus are not dynamic, and do not adapt to actual and ever changing operating conditions and requirements in a restaurant. Accordingly, there is also need for a system which can update and modify task list based on sensed or measured operating conditions.
Current fast-food systems typically use in-store CRTs to display tasks. When a task is complete, the employee typically hits a “bump bar” below the screen to notify the system that the task is done. The system then updates the CRT to indicate that task is done. But this assumes that there is no “cheating” (i.e., hitting the bump bar without properly completing the task) by the employee. This situation has been problematic for supervisors who in the fast-paced food service industry cannot possibly watch all their employees constantly to ensure that tasks are actually being properly performed. Furthermore, cheating by employees can have a detrimental financial impact on the fast-food and other restaurants. For example, pulling food prepared in a deep vat fryer out before it is done can adversely affect food quality (e.g, taste, texture, appearance, etc.) and shelf life. Likewise, for example, bakers who pull products out of ovens before they are finished baking adversely affect food quality. Improperly prepared food causes customer dissatisfaction and loss of repeat business which translates into financial losses for food service providers. Another example where cheating adversely affects the food service industry is in the area of maintenance. Employees who are lazy or busy may often seek shortcuts by simply skipping maintenance tasks, or performing them inadequately, but still hit the bump bar. Known systems cannot detect and provide a sufficient check on this type of cheating. Accordingly, there is a need for a system which can provide automatic verification that a required task has been properly completed by sensing various operating parameters, rather than relying only on the honesty employees alone.
Virtual Hold Timer
The amount of time a food item can be held and served after it has been cooked is governed by both franchise standards and government regulations. For example, the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) standards established by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) dictates the amount of time food can be held at various temperatures after it has been cooked before it must be discarded. These standards are intended to prevent illnesses caused by ingesting food products contaminated with microbial pathogens which may be passed on to consumers by improper food handling practices. Therefore, accurate measurement and tracking of food “hold times” is of critical importance to the food preparation industry. Once this “hold time” expires, the food must be thrown out.
Current systems often use small plastic tags, for example, saying “00”, “15”, “30”, “45”, etc. to represent minutes past the hour when the food expires—the tag travels with the food. It is also possible to include a small mechanical or electronic timer that travels with the food. Another known system uses electric or mechanical timers at each successive location; however, it is complicated to set each successive timer based on the amount of time left on the timer at the previous location. These known systems have not worked well, and much food is often sold beyond its proper hold time, thereby subjecting food service operators to liability for violating HACCP standards and potentially exposing consumers to food-borne related illnesses.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system that can establish an automatic “virtual” hold timer associated with each batch of food that is prepared. Such a system could track the movement of each batch of food through the restaurant or kitchen, and figuratively “travel” with the food from the cooking appliance to various holding areas and the point of sale (POS). Such a system could also provide a single, continuous hold timer for each batch of food, thereby eliminating the need for kitchen or restaurant employees to set new times manually taking into account elapsed hold time from a previous cooking or hold station. This minimizes the risk associated with food handlers having to physically handle timers and either misplacing them or making errors in setting successive timers. Moreover, such a system could assist in controlling inventory of cooked food items by sensing that a particular batch of food being held is about to expire and then sending a signal instructing food preparers that another batch of the same product. Such a system could further be linked to the POS system and historical sales data maintained by the system to determine how much of a particular food product should be cooked to meet the anticipated demand and replace the food whose hold time is about to expire.
Shortening Management/Fryer Maintenance Management
The proper maintenance of deep-fat fryers is also of great concern to the operator of a commercial or institutional cooking establishment. Such fryers typically use food-grade oil or shortening as the cooking medium. However, the cooking medium degrades with each cooking cycle. In order to ensure consistent food quality, periodic filtering and/or changing of the cooking medium is required. Fryer controllers are often hardwired to demand cleaning at a fixed time each day; thus making it impossible to adapt fryer maintenance to actual operating data (such as sales conditions, number of cooking cycles, etc). Other prior art systems such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,331,575 to Koether et al. are directed to a stand-alone “smart fryer” in which a cooking computer is physically connected to an individual fryers. Such prior art systems offer some improvement over the fixed-time fryer controllers in that they attempt to ensure that changing or filtering of the cooking medium is conducted timely and properly, based on tracking actual fryer usage and other relevant parameters such as cooking temperatures. However, an individual fryer cooking computer only determines when cooking medium maintenance is required for the particular fryer with which it is physically associated, without regard for any other fryers. This is problematic for restaurant management because it is not desirable to have too many fryers unavailable due to maintenance when the restaurant is busy and demand for food is highest. Ideally, fryer maintenance should coincide with off-peak demand periods, or at the very least, multiple fryers should not be unavailable for service at the same time. Accordingly, there is a need for a networked control system that could monitor and control maintenance of all fryers at a given restaurant location. Furthermore, there is a need for a networked control system that can balance individual fryer usage and time the maintenance of all fryers at a given restaurant location to ensure that a maximum number of fryers are available for service during periods of peak food demand.